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Standing Out Among the Rest

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Consumers are constantly surrounded by media and advertising influences. As a result, navigating marketing efforts as a healthcare company can be daunting. So, how can brands create unique, consumer-focused marketing campaigns? And what exactly makes a brand stand out from its competitors?

Mayo Clinic Health System may provide a blueprint. Mayo is a brand proven to be very successful at healthcare marketing, and was recently nominated as an Academic Medical Centre (AMC) brand for the second year running by Brand Finance, the world’s leading independent brand valuation consultancy, in its second annual AMC Global Brand Ranking.

44% of healthcare professionals note Mayo Clinic’s leadership in integrating technologies such as robotics, digital imaging, and AI into its healthcare services, a key driver of the company’s reputation and brand strength, according to the AMC Global Brand Ranking. The Global Brand Ranking also recognized that Mayo Clinic’s brand overall is getting stronger, with a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score increase of 1.2 points to 86.9/100.

So, what makes Mayo Clinic so successful at marketing? And how can your brand emulate their strategies and tactics to succeed?

Highlight successes

A large aspect of Mayo Clinic’s brand building success has to do with its transformative research and technological innovation in the field of medicine. Those aspects of the company serve to intrigue consumers, and in turn, drive the company’s overall brand reputation, according to Brand Finance.

As a brand navigating advertising in the supply chain industry, you should highlight any technological assets or groundbreaking research that your company has been involved in within advertising campaigns. Customers nowadays are looking for brands that are trustworthy, groundbreaking, and future oriented. Focusing on how your brand aligns with these topics in advertising campaigns will help your brand to stand out.

Brand awareness

U.S.-based brands claimed seven out of the top ten spots due to widespread recognition, according to the AMC Global Brand Ranking.

Brand awareness is critical to a company’s ability to gain customers and to sell. Widespread recognition is when a brand name is broadly recognized, and companies should strive to increase their own recognition through its marketing efforts.

Companies can learn from others’ successes when planning a marketing strategy. If your  company in the supply chain industry could use assistance creating content that both stands out and increases awareness, contact John Pritchard at jpritchard@sharemovingmedia.com to set up a time to brainstorm your company’s marketing success strategy.

The Benefits of Outsourcing Content Marketing: Why Your Company Needs an Expert

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Having a solid marketing strategy is key to successfully promoting and selling products. All companies in the medical supply chain industry should be spending time and effort on marketing to increase brand awareness and customer following.

Marketing strategies have continued to rapidly develop, as technological advancements, changing consumer preferences, legal changes, and more has recently greatly impacted the industry, according to Forbes. Options are extensive when companies are deciding how to best promote their products. Companies today are, in fact, allocating more and more of their annual budgets toward marketing campaigns. According to Forbes and a Taradel marketing survey, 94% of small businesses have plans to boost their marketing spending in 2024.

While marketing is a critical component to a business’ success, there is no doubt that content creation can be time consuming and requires expertise to properly master. That’s where outsourcing content marketing comes in— your company doesn’t have to produce its marketing content all by itself. By outsourcing marketing, your team can focus its time on what it does best.

The goal of your company should be to make a profit, maximize sales, and make lasting, trustworthy connections with customers, not to get sidetracked by marketing. Read on to learn more about how your business can outsourcing marketing:

What is marketing outsourcing?

Marketing outsourcing is delegating a company’s marketing tasks to external professionals. Outsourced marketing professionals will assist a company in creating campaigns, content, marketing strategy, determining a target audience, and more. Outsourcing allows companies to focus on its day-to-day operations while hired professionals take charge of marketing responsibilities.

According to a study from Sagefrog, a marketing agency, 59% of companies decide to outsource marketing. The primary reason is that outsourcing is more cost effective, and because marketing professionals can assist companies in implementing new, innovative strategies.

What are the benefits of outsourcing?

  1. Trusted experts

External marketing professionals/agencies are well-versed in the nuances of the industry. They thoroughly understand industry trends and how to best utilize new technologies. They can also come up with more successful tactics and navigate any potential changes or challenges. External marketing professionals, with extensive experience, are much better equipped to give your brand a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Outsourcing, therefore, allows employees to spend time and resources elsewhere while professionals take care of marketing efforts.

  1. New perspective

Outsourcing offers a company a new marketing perspective. Businesses that conduct their own marketing campaigns often fall into routines and run the risk of reusing lackluster campaigns. Marketing agencies are experienced with what it takes to create successful campaign tactics, and can bring new ideas, innovative strategies, and a fresh perspective to the table to better promote your company.

  1. Cost reduction

Outsourcing can produce results similar to hiring in-house, but it may be more cost effective for your company to outsource its marketing. Outsourcing allows a company to reduce training costs and save time by not hiring new employees. Your business can instead allocate resources where they are most needed, saving time and money in the long run.

If your company in the medical supply industry could benefit from outsourcing its marketing efforts, look no further than Share Moving Media. With over 30 years of experience in the medical supply chain industry, our team of experienced staff have extensive knowledge of industry trends, changes and challenges, terminology, strategies that work best, and more. We can assist you with marketing responsibilities, from determining a successful campaign strategy to helping your team with content creation. Contact Scott Adams today to set up a brief meeting to discuss the benefits of outsourcing your company’s marketing.

ROI – What Really Matters (And What Doesn’t)

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Gaining value from investments is the main goal of any well-functioning business. However, industry challenges such as supply shortages, staff turnover, and pandemic disruptions have impacted the profitability of businesses in the medical distribution industry.

Practically all business decisions require an understanding of how the decision will impact return on investment (ROI), especially when it comes to creating marketing tactics. Focusing on ROI strategies can guide a brand in the right direction and refocus its overall goals. So, what is ROI, and what aspects matter (and don’t) when it comes to ROI?

Return on investment is a calculation of the value of an investment versus the cost. ROI is a useful measurement to assess the profitability of a particular investment. ROI can be calculated using the formula: (profit minus cost)/(cost).

Many professionals consider ROI tracking extremely important to overall businesses success. Marketing ROI, specifically, is a measurement that attributes profit and revenue growth to the success of marketing initiatives, according to a Marketing Evolution blog.

Calculating return on marketing investment allows organizations to determine the degree to which marketing efforts as a whole, or on a campaign-basis, contribute to revenue growth. Traditionally, ROI is used to justify budget allocation and future campaigns and initiatives. So, what really matters when it comes to marketing ROI?

  1. Determining Marketing Budget

There are a myriad of marketing mix combinations, especially with the recent increase in online marketing. Any form of marketing campaign requires a budget, and that is why having a complete understanding of the profit that marketing generates is important.

  1. Measure Campaign Success

Measuring the success of specific marketing campaigns is crucial to establish a baseline for future strategies. Understanding the impact of individual campaigns on overall revenue growth can help marketing professionals identify the strategies that were most profitable.

  1. Competitive Analysis

Monitoring competitors allows advertisers to understand how their company is performing in marketing compared to other businesses in their industry. Many factors impact marketing success within the medical distribution industry, and so knowing how competing companies compare can guide advertising tactics.

Marketing decisions require a knowledge of ROI trends to ensure that business decision are profitable. What matters most is that a business consistently tracks these statistics, whether it be through Google Analytics/ads, a CRM software, call tracking software, online campaign tracking software, etc.

Keeping track of ROI gives a business valuable insight to use toward a successful marketing strategy. If your business could use assistance with its marketing strategy, Share Moving Media has extensive supply chain industry marketing experience and expertise. With decades spent navigating the industry, SMM can create content for your business that is engaging, creative, and relevant. Call John Pritchard at jpritchard@sharemovingmedia.com to set up a time to speak more about how SMM can help your company improve its marketing ROI.

Go-to-market strategies are critical in today’s digital health world

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Mobile health, health IT, wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, and personalized medicine are transforming patient care. One in three smartphone users monitor health and fitness through their phone and over half of Americans are comfortable with virtual consultations. Digital technology is changing the fragmented healthcare system to center around consumers.

The American Medical Association identifies three key trends rising to the top of the digital health landscape include:

  • Consumerization of healthcare: the retail healthcare model is being highlighted as the future of patient care.
  • Access for underserved communities: access to healthcare remains a significant challenge for many individuals in the U.S.
  • Application of big data: healthcare data is a highly sought after commodity, with organizations increasingly seeking to harness and interpret what they, and others, collect.

These trends are providing opportunities to bring digital solutions to the healthcare marketplace. To do that, organizations must create go-to-market (GTM) strategies to gain a comprehensive understanding of the marketplace, the target market and a potential product’s place in it.

The most common challenges when launching GTM strategies for digital solutions, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), are the lack of experience selling or positioning and measuring value. Successful GTM strategies include defining the benefits, creating value frameworks, identifying relevant stakeholders, developing value messages, determining the right channel mix and content type for each stakeholder, and then building a strategy.

Traditional stakeholders usually include patients and clinicians, and non-traditional stakeholders might include specialty healthcare providers and others. They demand a transformation of marketing and customer engagement led by customer needs. Identifying their digital acumen helps identify those needs.

For example, PwC highlights four physician personas that differ in the level of digital savviness:

  • Traditionalists: physicians who only use digital tools available when necessary.
  • Digital Explorers: physicians who start to realize the benefit of digital tools.
  • Digital Adopters: physicians who try to use digital tools as often as possible and are quick to get started.
  • Next Normal Champions: physicians who are among the first to use digital tools and encourage others to use them.

PwC says it’s important to define must-win moments and value messages for each. This can be a physician willing to support patients with treatment-related information despite having limited time with patients. Organizations can position digital solutions as valuable to physicians because they help patients access treatment-related content without the physician.

Measuring the value of digital solutions is challenging. Sales numbers can struggle to depict it. Organizations need to put value frameworks in place in order to highlight stakeholder value over sales numbers. Qualitative KPIs like outcomes, engagement and activity can measure the effectiveness of communication strategies and the perception of brand reputation. 

How can your organization get creative with your marketing campaigns for 2024? At Share Moving Media we help best in class manufacturers build relationships with the industry’s decision-makers. Please contact us at sadams@sharemovingmedia.com to learn how we can help you gain market share through distribution.

How commercial healthcare providers are helping change the healthcare marketing industry

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With increased consumerism in healthcare, these new participants are changing how healthcare organizations market themselves 

The healthcare industry is witnessing a continued push towards consumerism. Stakeholders are turning to retail, tech and other sectors for innovation to help solve familiar healthcare problems. Enter commercial healthcare providers (CHPs). They can be defined as retail, payor, senior and tech-based providers changing the landscape of consumer healthcare as people seek convenience and quality in their healthcare experience.

In recent years, retailers have delivered products in a more convenient way, changing consumer behavior. An omnichannel approach has blurred the lines. Consumers can easily research a product and maybe even test it before purchasing it. As this approach has become more comfortable for consumers, they are pursuing it in other areas like healthcare.

Some familiar names in retail like Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and Amazon can be considered retail-based commercial healthcare providers today. Those and other retail-based commercial healthcare providers are acquiring and investing in tech-based startups and senior-focused providers in response to the shift in dynamics – both consumer-centric preferences and an aging population.

Payors like UnitedHealth Group and its Optum division are considered payor-based commercial healthcare providers. They are also investing in tech-based startups and senior-focused providers. Redefining the space is a change to fee-for-value reimbursement models, physician shortages, consumerism and digital disruption.

But how are commercial healthcare providers successfully marketing themselves and their services to the changing landscape? And what can other healthcare stakeholders learn from their entries into the marketplace?

Organizations must constantly expand their footprint in today’s healthcare environment. But there are plenty of barriers to growth like increased consumer expectations of healthcare, greater patient exposure to price, and expanding choices for healthcare consumers. Consumer interest must be stimulated to remain competitive in this healthcare marketplace.

Optum says that to drive sustainable growth, healthcare leaders need to better understand the consumers and patients they currently serve. Every healthcare leader should ask these four data-centric marketing questions:

  1. What customers do we need to reach in order to be successful?
  2. What do we know about our current customers?
  3. How do we ensure our current customers continue to choose us?
  4. How do we attract more of the right customers?

There is more consumer data, patient data and real-time marketing data to generate strategic and actionable insights than ever before. Healthcare organizations must act more like consumer-driven brands in today’s consumer-centric marketplace. Deploying precision marketing makes marketing more effective and more cost-efficient.

Optum helped AdventHealth develop a six-month marketing campaign that led 134,000 patients to the Central Florida health system, instead of its competitor. They discussed it during a healthcare marketing webinar.

They supervised a precision marketing campaign designed to speak directly to the people likely to use their services. But AdventHealth needed digital tools and help from marketing partners to achieve their results. Optum mined digital data to prioritize 850,000 people, dividing them into 11 specific cohorts. Some included young singles without a primary care physician, married couples with kids, very sick people with more than two or three diseases requiring complex care, and people of all ages suffering from unexplained stomach and abdominal pains.

Unique messaging was designed for each group, considering clinical needs, gender, language and culture. People received the messaging through their preferred media channels at the times they were likely to see it.

It led 134,000 patients to AdventHealth rather than the competitor’s emergency departments and the investment yielded a $474 return for every marketing dollar spent, according to AdventHealth.

A focused approach to marketing by reaching out directly to likely customers and engaging them through personalized messaging can provide better results with less wasted effort.

Share Moving Media is experienced with the creation of marketing campaigns that increase SEO searches for companies within the medical distribution industry. We can assist your brand in creating content that is simple, shareable, and that appeals to emotion to effectively promote your company. Visit www.sharemovingmedia.com to learn more.